different situations and places in their lives, who all, at some critical point, question, re- define, reject or come to terms with their cultural inscription.
This corresponds to Spivak‟s notion of the two levels of representation. Spivak (1988) argues that the subaltern would cease to exist if she were to make herself heard. She then draws attention to the concepts of „representing‟ and „re-presenting‟: in the first instance, she speaks of political representation such that one person assumes the place of another and speaks for them or on their behalf. While, in the second instance, she speaks of the portrayal of a person in one form or another. Nair may not be subaltern in Spivak‟s terms42, but she definitely makes herself heard as a Third World woman in both senses of the word „representation‟.
Nair does not technically speak for or on behalf of Indian women but rather tells (represents) their stories by depicting (re-presenting) them in her films.
Mohanty‟s argument (1988) that Third World women/women of colour are not „singular monolithic entities‟ leads on to the next aspect. Using Naficy‟s concept of the plurality of identity that is evident in the characters of „accented‟ films, it has been established that each of Nair‟s female characters exhibit more than one role as Indian women. In Chapter One, the brief history of popular Indian cinema showed that a very limited representation of Indian women occurred and continues to occur in film. Indian women are often established as dichotomies of „pure‟ and „virtuous‟ or „loose‟ and „common‟. Mohanty warns against limited representations; she argues that representation needs to take into consideration factors that comprise the context of an individual and the manner in which these factors influence the condition of that particular individual. According to Mohanty, this is important specifically in the representation of Third World women and women of colour for the very fact that their struggles have tended to be universalised or homogenised in western feminist scholarship.
A comparison of the characters of Kinnu and Pimmi, and Mina and Aditi reveal how Nair has constructed her characters as embodying plural identities that have developed as a result of factors specific to their contexts. In fact, even the mother-daughter relationships between Kinnu and Mina, and Pimmi and Aditi are portrayed differently. The only common factor among these four characters is the fact that they are Indian women. This common factor distinguishes them from other Third World women/women of colour in order to highlight their unique gendered experiences, but in no way does Nair represent them to be exactly the
42Refer to the Postcolonial Feminisms section of Chapter One (pg 35) for alternative considerations of the notion of the subaltern.
same as one another. They don‟t share the same plural identities, and even if they do, the constitution of these identities is different in each case.
Kinnu and Pimmi are both mothers to fairly independent young women. But, while Pimmi was able to bring her child up in a stable and secure environment, Kinnu was forced to bring Mina up under circumstances that changed with each of their moves into or out of a country.
Pimmi, having always had India as her context, has been able to instil Indian values and beliefs in Aditi with much greater ease than Kinnu has with Mina. Even though Aditi eventually acts out against these values and beliefs with her pre-marital affair, she still does agree to an arranged marriage. Mina, however, doesn‟t. Aditi has a context in which India and its traditions make sense to her; she knows how far she can stretch the bounds. Mina, however, has never had a context in which to understand India and all that it stands for. That is why, when its culture and norms are forced upon her, she falls back on a context she knows in order to act out against its bounds.
Another point to take into consideration is how Kinnu and Pimmi have developed differently in their different contexts. Kinnu becomes financially independent because their economic privilege is lost in their move to the United States. Kinnu is forced to alter her identity as an Indian woman who is dependent on the financial support of her husband, because it becomes a question of survival for her family. Pimmi, on the other hand, has never had her economic situation change, and has never had to question whether or not it would. Her faith in her husband‟s financial support has never had to falter and she has thus remained completely financially dependent on him.
This filters through to the lives of their daughters. Even though Mina was never very ambitious, she did work to help support the family, and when she does decide to leave and spend the rest of her life with Demetrius, she makes plans to work and own a business. Mina has seen what her mother has been through and wants to ensure that she does not endure the same struggle. Aditi, on the other hand, does not mind being supported by Hemant, because that is the way her mother has lived. It is also much easier for Pimmi to let go of her daughter knowing that she will be supported by her husband. Pimmi has every faith that her daughter will be taken care of because they have arranged her a good marriage and husband. For Kinnu, however, letting go of Mina is not as easy or simple because she is not sure of Mina‟s future. Firstly, she knows nothing about Demetrius and secondly, based on her experiences, she is aware of what happens when you follow unquestioningly the one you love.
Mohanty (1988) also argues that one of the assumptions prevalent in western feminist scholarship is that Third World women are victims of their gender, sexual difference and patriarchy, and that they experience these circumstances/aspects in the same way. This, she says, is not always true because not all men are evil and oppressive, and not all women are victims of that oppression. In fact, even oppression is experienced differently by different women depending on the patriarchal and hegemonic control specific to their contexts. As discussed in Chapter One (pg 32), related to this is another misconception that Third World women are “sexually constrained [...], ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, religious, domesticated [and] family-oriented”. Third World women and women of colour themselves need to correct these assumptions in their texts, says Mohanty. An interrogation of Ria and Alice in relation to these assumptions illustrates how Nair highlights the mistaken nature of these perceptions.
An investigation of Ria‟s life experiences and the male influences that have contributed to them reveal that Nair is careful not to portray men solely as evil oppressors. For instance, Tej and Lalith, and their relationship to and interactions with Ria, are good examples of this.
Lalith is very protective of Ria after her father‟s death and he treats her with much love and respect, honouring her dreams and ambitions of becoming a writer. Tej, on the hand, takes advantage of Ria and harms her, for the very fact that she does not have a father and therefore does not have anyone to turn to for assistance. He violates her innocence and thereby silences her for a large part of her life. While Lalith attempts to uplift Ria, Tej oppresses her by abusing her and thereby renders her a victim.
This leads on to the next assumption that Third World women are victims of their economic and social circumstance. Using Ria and Alice as examples, it becomes evident that Nair does not want to convey this assumption in her films. Ria grows up in an upper middle class home.
She may not have had a biological father, but she was never short of love, food, shelter and education. The one problem in her life is that she was abused as a child. Alice, on the other hand, is alone, works hard for living and has absolutely no access to the resources enjoyed by the family she works for. The inclination is thus to assume that both Ria and Alice are victims even though they are both operating in completely different circumstances. A closer interrogation, however, shows that Ria has lived her life as a victim but Alice has not. While Ria has borne the burden of her abuse from childhood, Alice has learned to understand and accept her status and to exist contentedly within it. Ria, however, chooses not to remain a
victim and speaks out against her suffering as soon as she is ready to do so. In these two constructions, Nair highlights the fact that women are not necessarily victims if they belong to the Third World, and in the event that they are, they make a conscious decision not to be.
The experience of oppression is depicted by Nair as differing from character to character. This is, yet again, clarified in the construction of Ria and Alice. As already discussed, Ria experiences one form of oppression. Alice, however, experiences quite another even though she chooses not be a victim. In fact, Alice‟s oppression occurs on more than one level. Alice is oppressed by the men of her own social and economic standing who can‟t seem to understand her act of trying on Aditi‟s jewellery. They immediately come to the conclusion that she is stealing. She is also oppressed by the women she works for who exploit her by expecting her to be available whenever they may need her. To add to this, these women don‟t even acknowledge her existence if she is not serving them. Just the fact that Ria and Alice belong to different levels of the class structure, means that their oppressions are experienced in different ways.
Nair also effectively dispels the misrepresentation of Third World women as sexually constrained, ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, religious, domesticated and family- oriented. Alice may be poor, domesticated and possibly uneducated; in fact, she may even be referred to as subaltern in the way that Spivak understands it, but she is by no means sexually constrained or ignorant. She uses her body and her sexuality to lure Dubey and maintain his interest in her. These are not the characteristics of a sexually constrained and ignorant woman.
In fact, it is Dubey who is shocked when she reveals that she knows about „e-mail‟. Just before that, he indulges in an awkward description, using simplistic language, in an attempt to explain to her what e-mail actually is. Yet again, this does not indicate ignorance.
Ria, on the other hand, may be sexually constrained due to her past experiences, and she may be religious due to her upbringing, but she is definitely not ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound or domesticated. She comes from a financially stable and comfortable family, she has had an education that she hopes to continue, she is aware of social matters and is able to advise her cousin Aditi, and she has no plans to marry young and will not agree to an arranged marriage. In fact, when she does decide to settle down, she plans to do so for love.
Nair, in dealing with the diverse issues experienced by Indian women and the diversity of the experience of these issues, re-defines the representation of Third World women and illustrates how assumptions previously made on their behalf can be rectified.
In Nair‟s „accented‟ construction of Indian women in her films, she deals with a concern - that has been raised in the writings of Third World women - of the significance of narrative in the creation of oppositional agency. The character of Mina in Mississippi Masala (1991) is a good example to illustrate this point. The narrative of the film is structured according to the Hollywood mainstream interracial love story genre. Belonging to a popular and dominant cinematic practice, this genre has certain conventions that have to be complied with in order to make it appealing to the mass market. Nair, however, uses this popular mode to create oppositional agency. This is particularly clear in the construction of Mina. The Hollywood narrative structure tends to privilege white males as lead characters, especially during the period in which this film was made. But Nair deliberately uses this narrative to tell the story of an Indian woman. In addition, this Indian woman has a plural identity as opposed to belonging to a female character type. Also, Mina defies tradition and charts her own destiny, and is not contained or punished for her defiance.
By giving Indian women a space within the mainstream, Nair is re-defining their construction in popular modes of representation. These women are no longer flat, uni-dimensional types that extoll preferred patterns of behaviour. As plural beings, these characters are not only marginal within the context of the film, but also within the actual popular narrative. By placing Mina within a popular narrative, Nair has made the marginal space controversial. By representing Mina, an Indian woman who defies cultural values and beliefs in order to define her own identity, Nair has made the marginal space resistant. And, by using her own interstitial margin between her home and host society to merge a Western mainstream narrative with characters of her own cultural ethnicity, Nair has made the marginal space confrontational.
Nair also uses aspects of the Bollywood narrative structure in Monsoon Wedding (2002).
These aspects include many subplots, music, dance, colour and the characteristic wedding. It is not, however, a Bollywood film or a popular Indian film because the female characters do not fit neatly into the dichotomies of the pure and virtuous woman or the „loose‟ and
„common‟ woman.
Aditi does battle with these identities in her attempt to understand her own plurality, but she eventually comes to a compromise within herself about where she is situated in relation to them. Unlike the usual conclusion to a Bollywood film, Aditi is not punished for her so-called deviant behaviour by being killed, imprisoned or subjected to eternal ridicule, neither is she saved through marriage. Instead, Aditi chooses to be honest about her activities which could have been detrimental to her emotional well-being in the long run, but which, she realises, were not wrong because she acted in response to her own needs and desires. Her honesty gained her the respect of her fiancé and the power of choice. In this way, Aditi re-fashions the roles of the traditional Indian wife in Bollywood cinema. Nair, in this kind of construction, has proposed a new way of representing Indian women in popular narratives. Breaking the rules governing behaviour does not automatically equate to deviant, „loose‟ or „common‟
behaviour.
Spivak (Adamson interview in Harasym, 1990) speaks about writing women to be read and not pretending or assuming to give them a voice. In this regard, she refers to the subaltern.
This subaltern, she states, belongs to that space in society that is cut off from all lines of mobility. And, in occupying this space, argues Spivak, the subaltern is invisible and oppressed, and actually does not own a space in which to speak. She is, consequently, not heard by both the First and Third worlds. As this description stands, it applies only to the character of Alice across both of Nair‟s films. This is strange because the ideas that Spivak offers to ensure that the subaltern is heard so that she may cease to exist as such, are also applicable to the other female characters in the films.
This notion of the subaltern is reworked by Radhika Gajjala (date unknown) who acknowledges the female subaltern‟s difficulty in trying to speak or be heard in dominant discourses, but also argues that even the female “not-subaltern” also experiences difficulty in finding a non-ambiguous and non-problematic space from which to speak. This re- interpretation of Spivak then takes into consideration those women who were not necessarily subaltern but who, like the subaltern, were not heard because they did not occupy a space that was conducive to their speaking. Nair‟s other female characters would now fit into this new understanding. Mina, Kinnu, Aditi, Ria and Pimmi, like Alice, were all in their own right not heard until or after their border-crossing moment.
Even though Nair, in constructing these characters, gave them each a marginal space within popular narratives in which to speak, these women, as their stories were told, found their own
spaces within themselves, within their Third World brown bodies. Like Spivak who was not claiming to give Bhuvaneswari Bhaduri a voice when she represented her and wrote her to be read, Nair was not aiming to give Mina, Kinnu, Aditi, Ria, Pimmi or Alice a voice, but she was giving them a resistant, controversial, confrontational marginal space in which to find their own.